President Urging Wider U.S. Powers in Terrorism Law

By DAVID E. SANGER

Published: September 11, 2003

QUANTICO, Va., Sept. 10 — President Bush called today for a significant expansion of law enforcement powers under the USA Patriot Act, using the eve of the second anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist acts to say that his administration was winning the war on terrorism but that "unreasonable obstacles" in the law impeded the pursuit of terror suspects.

With his speech here today at the F.B.I. training academy, where he spoke to a cheering crowd of federal investigators and troops from the nearby Marine training base, Mr. Bush plunged directly into the debate over whether the Patriot Act's provisions were too far reaching. He argued that they did not reach far enough and promised, "We will never forget the servants of evil who plotted the attacks, and we will never forget those who rejoiced at our grief."

Mr. Bush proposed letting federal law enforcement agencies issue "administrative subpoenas" in terrorism cases without obtaining approvals from judges or grand juries, expanding the federal death penalty statutes to cover more terrorism-related crimes and making it harder for people suspected in terrorism-related cases to be released on bail.

Expanding subpoena powers is the most contentious of the three amendments to the act that Mr. Bush is proposing. It was in the original bill passed after 9/11 but was dropped in in the Congressional conference committee. Today, Mr. Bush said that those expanded powers were used in health care frauds.

"If we can use these subpoenas to catch crooked doctors," Mr. Bush said, "the Congress should allow law enforcement officials to use them in catching terrorists."

In most cases now, investigators have to apply for subpoenas to a judge or the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

It is unclear how the proposals will fare in a Congress where Democrats and some Republicans have raised questions that the Patriot Act went too far, but the administration is counting on the second anniversary of the terrorist attacks to generate support.

Mr. Bush also called for expanding the death penalty to include terror-related crimes like sabotaging nuclear centers using methods that result in deaths. Mr. Bush also said Congress had to let judges deny bail for terror suspects. Judges have that power with some drug offenses.

"This disparity in the law makes no sense," Mr. Bush said. "If dangerous drug dealers can be held without bail in this way, Congress should allow for the same treatment for accused terrorists."

Attorney General John Ashcroft advocated the death penalty and bail provisions as he recently crisscrossed the country, answering criticisms from civil liberties groups, members of both parties and 160 communities that have voted to oppose it. The American Civil Liberties Union and some Democratic presidential hopefuls said Mr. Bush was using the emotional moment of the second anniversary to expand federal authority.

Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, said in a statement: "This administration's `don't ask, don't tell' approach to governance should make every American leery of handing over new authority to John Ashcroft before we know how he's using the power he already has."

The executive director of the A.C.L.U., Anthony D. Romero, said, "It is unfortunate that President Bush would use this tragic date to continue to endorse the increasingly unpopular anti-civil-liberties policies" of the Justice Department.

It is far from clear that Mr. Bush will win the powers he seeks. A Republican strategist who is close to the White House said, "Bush is betting that he will either get the powers or get an issue he can use to club his Democratic opponent, whoever that turns out to be."

The strategist said Republican polling found that support for expanded powers remained strong, especially among Mr. Bush's conservative base. Mr. Bush's spokesman, Scott McClellan, told reporters at the White House that the three provisions that Mr. Bush endorsed had been introduced by members of Congress. Under repeated questioning, however, Mr. McClellan did not rule out a broader White House agenda of further revising the Patriot Act.

"The Justice Department," he said, "is always looking at ways to better protect the American people."

Later, he added, "It's always important for people to look at other ways that we can find tools to help law enforcement combat terrorism at home."

Mr. Bush spoke under a brilliant blue sky on a warm day, reminiscent in some ways of Sept. 10, 2001, when a more carefree-looking president ended up at the Colony Beach and Tennis Resort in Longboat Key, Fla. That evening, he joked with diners and reporters in the resort restaurant and headed to bed, unaware that the terrorist conspiracy that was about to change his presidency was beginning to unfold.

He used his speech today to recall Sept. 11 and to argue that he has made the country more secure.

"Tomorrow's anniversary is a time for remembrance," he said. "Yet history asked more than memory. The forces of global terror cannot be appeased, and they cannot be ignored. They must be hunted, and they will be defeated."

On a day that a new tape of Osama bin Laden was released, Mr. Bush never mentioned Mr. bin Laden's name, although he said, "Al Qaeda has lost nearly two-thirds of its known leaders."

He came close to repeating two of the most controversial statements he made this year about Iraq, that it supported terrorism and that it had weapons of mass destruction.

"The terrorists have lost a sponsor in Iraq," the president said. "And no terrorist networks will ever gain weapons of mass destruction from Saddam Hussein's regime. That regime is no more."

He said that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence were talking to each other in ways they never did two years ago and that the F.B.I. had been transformed into an agency that focuses on preventing terrorism rather than just solving crimes. He was surrounded by the bureau's mobile laboratories, which work with hazardous materials and bomb attacks.

A few hundred yards away stood the symbol of the old F.B.I., a copy of small-town America that the bureau built years ago, with the care that goes into a movie set, to train agents to foil bank robberies and negotiate with hostage takers. The fake movie theater on the main street, the Biograph, had a marquee advertising the movie showing on the the night in 1934 that F.B.I. agents shot John Dillinger. It was "Manhattan Melodrama," with Clark Gable and Myrna Loy, a reminder of a New York far more innocent than the one that emerged from Sept. 11.